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Bruno Ashford @brunoashfordSubscribeModule 8 · Lesson 8.2 · 12 min
Follow-Up That Never Drops a Lead
Draft personalised follow-ups from your CRM so no lead goes quiet without a next step.
Use ← → to move. The marker highlights text and the pencil draws on the slide; navigation locks while you annotate. Undo removes the last mark, Esc exits.
1Define your follow-up rules
Write the rules down in CLAUDE.md or a follow-up skill: how many days after a quote, a call or no reply; how many attempts; when to stop. Example: day 2, day 5, day 10, then a polite close-the-loop message on day 20.
2Find the overdue leads
With your CRM connected (Module 6), ask for a read-only list of every lead overdue for contact according to your rules.
Read my CRM, read-only. List every open lead or deal where the last contact was more than [5] days ago and there is no future task scheduled. For each: name, company, stage, days since last contact, what was last discussed (from notes and emails), and deal value. Sort by deal value, highest first.3Draft one message per lead, with a real reason to reply
A good follow-up refers to something specific and adds value: an answer to a question they asked, a relevant example, a next step with a date. 'Just checking in' is not a follow-up.
Use the copywriter subagent to draft a follow-up for each lead on this list, following the follow-up rules in CLAUDE.md. Each message must mention something specific from our last conversation and offer one clear next step. Under 80 words. Create them as drafts in my email, not sent. Then list them for my review.4Update the CRM after you send
After you send, ask Claude to log the activity and set the next follow-up date, using the preview, approve, write loop from Module 6. The CRM stays honest and tomorrow's list is correct.
5Close the loop gracefully
After the last attempt, send a short close-the-loop message and mark the lead as closed lost with a reason. A clean pipeline is worth more than a long one.
Ask any owner how many leads they lost last year because nobody followed up. They do not know, and that is the problem. The lead did not say no. It just went quiet, and so did you.
This playbook runs every morning. It reads the CRM, finds every lead that is overdue for contact, reads the history, and drafts a follow-up that actually refers to the last conversation. You review and send. It takes 15 minutes, and it closes the leak.
Key points
- Leads rarely say no; they go quiet when you do.
- Write your follow-up cadence down so the agent can apply it.
- Every follow-up needs a specific reason to reply.
- Log the activity after sending so tomorrow's list is right.
Avoid
- Automating sends before you have reviewed a few hundred drafts.
- Generic 'just checking in' messages at scale.
- Following up forever instead of closing the loop.
A kitchen remodeling company in Ohio sent around 30 quotes a month and followed up on maybe half. The morning playbook found 22 quotes older than a week with no follow-up in its first run, worth a combined 380,000 dollars in quoted work. The owner reviewed and sent 22 drafts in 25 minutes. Four of those quotes turned into site visits that month. The numbers are theirs; the pattern is common.